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Comment by travisjungroth | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like the two surviving passengers would have died if they had life jackets on. I can’t imagine getting out of an inverted, flooded 185 cabin with a life jacket on.

I think there was some sense to not requiring life jackets on seaplanes. They’re much more confined spaces than most pleasure boats, not to mention that you’re usually on a boat rather than in it. The flooding is also usually just about instant as the airplane rolls over.

Seems common for reactive legislation to not actually fix the situation that’s being reacted to. Requiring shoulder harnesses during takeoff and landing (which is the case in the US) would have actually kept the deceased passenger conscious to escape, as said in the report. But they didn’t change that law.

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My reflex is to never mandate safety procedures. To put it simply, why should the state use force to mandate something like safety. The implication being if someone refuses the force of the state is used on them… which is definitely not good or improving safety.

Mandating the seatbelts exist, sure. Mandating people wear them? Idk about that.

In the case of tractors for instance, wearing a seatbelt is downright dangerous. You cannot jump out then, and will be killed by a tractor if it flips.

Mandating the wearing of seatbelts isn’t entirely about protecting the person wearing the seatbelt. An unbelted occupant becomes a projectile in a sufficiently violent collision, and that projectile can cause harm to people outside of the vehicle.

Or harm to other people inside the vehicle.

Heck, I recently saw a video (may be an old one) of a driver who fell out of his car while showing off his acceleration. Now the entire car is an uncontrolled projectile.

Interesting that pleasure craft have dead-man switches you can optionally affix. They’re also designed to turn anti-clockwise forever if nobody is at the wheel.

I guess because there aren’t seatbelts and these boats are usually open-top.

> pleasure craft... turn anti-clockwise forever if nobody is at the wheel.

That's probably a result of the "paddle wheel" effect of the propellor rotating through the water: a bug not a feature.

Isn't this dangerous to the person falling off (assuming no dead-man switch)? You fall off only to be run over by your own craft one turn later... It does mean that the boat won't run away far though, so there's that.

Everyone ends up paying for that, in the form of insurance rates.

They could just not cover injuries where a seatbelt isn’t warn.

That said, we have evidence that seatbelt wearing didn’t impact insurance rates. Literally look at the rates over time, even after these laws were enacting, insurance rates rose fast as ever

That's not how emergency room care works. It doesn't matter whether it's covered or not, you're going to get treated; quite likely the hospital ends up eating the bill if insurance doesn't pay.

And healthcare insurance if you live in the US, and regardless of where you live it clogs up your entire healthcare system as Jimmy-no-seatbelt flies into the trauma center.

That's an argument against a state-run healthcare system. It gives the state reason to classify arbitrary things as "increases the cost of insurance" and prohibit them.

In countries with universal healthcare you pay too, it's just called "taxes" instead.

Not only that but I think there’s also a meaningful quality to living in a society with excessive avoidable deaths. I personally think it contributes to a “shields up, guard up” culture that I’ve experienced and found exhausting.

> In the case of tractors for instance, wearing a seatbelt is downright dangerous. You cannot jump out then, and will be killed by a tractor if it flips.

The "proper" solution would be to have a rollcage so that even a flipped tractor does not crush its occupants. Not having a roll cage (presumably to save $) is a result of weaker/less mandated safety procedures already. Cars have a roof crush test. The solution isn't "jump out when big machine starts tipping", it's "protect the humans in the machine".

[0] - https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/02/rollover-101/ind...

I believe that Rollover Protection Systems (ROPS) have been mandatory on new tractors up to a certain weight for quite some time now.

It's not just you and your passengers that are less safe when you drive without seatbelts.

If you have to make a sudden sharp swerve when driving centrifugal forces try to move you from in front of the steering wheel, which can make it harder for you to remain in control. That increases the danger to nearby vehicles and pedestrians (and to nearby property that you might hit).

Seat and shoulder belts help keep you in place in front of the steering wheel.

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